Local Nielsen ratings snapshot (Fri.-Sun., May 31-June 2) -- a second deep dip for NBA Finals

06/05/19 03:04 PM

By ED BARK@unclebarkycom on TwitterDespite going down to the closing seconds, Sunday night’s Game 2 of the NBA Finals again was no match for last year’s in the D-FW Nielsen ratings.

The injury-riddled Golden State Warriors’ 109-104 road victory over the Toronto Raptors, which ran until 9:47 p.m. on ABC, averaged 365,524 viewers and 187,190 in the advertiser-prized 18-to-49-year-old age range.

That was easily enough to dominate the night, but well below the 470,059 total viewers and 230,294 in the 18-to-49 realm for 2018’s Game 2 between the Warriors and the Cleveland Cavaliers. That was an improvement over the 2017 Game 2 between the same two teams, which had 428,995 total viewers, with 221,290 of them 18-to-49ers.

Again, though, the saving grace is the high percentage of 18-to-49-year-olds, with more than half the crowd for Warriors-Raptors within this key demographic.

On Friday, the prime-time leaders were CBS’ 9 p.m. repeat of Blue Bloods in total viewers (140,586) and Fox4’s 9 p.m. local news and NBC’s Blindspot among 18-to-49-year-olds (27,173 each).

Here are Friday’s four-way local news derby results.

WFAA8 drew the most total viewers at 10 p.m. while Fox4 won with 25-to-54-year-olds (main advertiser target audience for news programming).

Fox4 swept the 6 a.m. races and stayed strong among 25-to-54-year-olds by winning at both 5 and 6 p.m. in that age range. NBC5 had the most total viewers at 5 p.m. and WFAA8 won in that measurement at 6 p.m.